Power crisis: Who is responsible?

President Chandrika Kumaratunga was reported in the Daily News of Friday saying that the Ceylon Electricity Board was ‘reeking of corruption’ and had it implemented the policies agreed upon years ago, the power crisis would not have reached the present proportions.

The state-controlled newspaper was quoting her in an interview she gave to the state-controlled TV station, ITN. She is reported to have stated that top officials of the CEB have built palatial mansions, which they could never have afforded on their present salaries.

The question which citizens of this country will be wanting to ask President Kumaratunga is: What was she doing about this since the last power crisis hit the country in 1996? The last power crisis resulted in the CEB being buried in an avalanche of criticism—some justified, some not. Was there consistent monitoring to ensure that the targets specified in the plan for generation of electricity drawn up by the CEB, after the 1996 crisis, were being kept?

The former Chief Planning Engineer of the CEB, Dr. Tilak Siymbalapitiya, in a letter to The Island, published on February 12, quite categorically stated that that the present power crisis was not due to dry weather or the high oil prices, but because the CEB had failed to generate the projected power requirements for the year 2001. The country is short of 250 MW of power as per plan of the CEB, he has pointed out.

President Kumaratunga would have been well aware of this anticipated shortfall of power. Had she even followed the debate on the siting of the proposed coal power project, she would have come to realise that the power demands of the country needed an immediate addition of new power generators to feed the national grid.

Rumours abounded about the ‘tender games’ that were being played for power projects with big international names in power generation in Colombo. There were oil lobbies and coal lobbies arguing vigorously on which form of fuel was best for the country. But for whatever reasons the specified schedules had not been adhered to and now the country is once again threatened with blackouts.

The vital question now is: Whose responsibility was it to keep power supplies going? Bureaucrats can be blamed but during the two governments of the People’s Alliance, on top of the professional bureaucracy of the CEB, were political appointees. They may have been appointees of Gen. Anuruddha Ratwatte and/or the President. Thus, one or the other or both got to take responsibility.

Transparency and accountability in governance are two features that have been lacking in all Sri Lankan governments. Accountability has been remarkably lacking after the fifties. It will be recalled that former Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake took responsibility and resigned from his premiership when six people were shot dead during the Hartal of 1953. Times have changed. Thousands will die but who takes responsibility?

Another feature of bad governance has been the government back-pedalling on statements even before the ink in which the previous reports was written was dry. On February 14, the state-controlled Daily News reported the President saying: "Senior public servants should be paid around Rs 350,00 per month as in Singapore but this could not be done not only due to the war but also due to inefficiency of the cabinet ministers. I am not going to tolerate corruption in the state sector."

But yesterday, the very same Daily News referring to the same speech of President Kumaratunga, quoting a presidential secretariat press release says:... ‘the attention of the government has been drawn to such attempts by certain media which tried to distort the speech by the president...... these sections of the media have shown that cabinet ministers and public officials were inefficient and corrupt. This is not only a distortion of the truth but also an attempt to instigate public servants against the government.’

We leave it to our readers to judge for themselves about who is distorting the’ truth’.

More important, however, is what President Kumaratunga and the Minister of Power and Energy are going to do about the CEB. If it is ‘reeking with corruption’ then drastic measures have to be taken. Or is it that when the rains come in a few weeks and the hydropower reservoirs are full, we forget about it all and let the stench reek — till the next drought comes along?

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